James Horner

“The sound world that I created for 'Avatar' had to be very different, really, than anything I ever created before. There is also three hours of music.”

“My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.”

“I think very abstractly when I'm writing. Then, as the project moves on, it becomes more like sculpting.”

“To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.”

“The music's job is to get the audience so involved that they forget how the movie turns out.”

“I think people hire me for the slightly weird angle that I bring. Part of the trick is keeping it sort of simple; you have to give the impression of not that much music playing when there's really a lot.”

“You have to make an audience experience with the ears as well as their eyes.”

“I'm used to working with the director and producer, and that's my relationship. It's very simple.”

“When I do a film score, I am basically nothing more than a fancy pencil for hire. I don't own any of the music when I am - it belongs to the film company - and likewise, when I am done, even if I come up with something astounding that I may want to revisit... in the world of film composition, you can't do that.”

“I don't use a computer in writing at all. I'm sort of old-fashioned about it.”

“I tend to write it and then let go emotionally.”